


Playing Shakespeare

by neveralarch



Category: The Kingmaker (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:10:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveralarch/pseuds/neveralarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not just writing plays that Richard has to contend with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Shakespeare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/gifts).



The Doctor just left a list of plays to write and glided away, like the completely unhelpful time traveler he was. He seemed to think that would be all that was needed.

He didn't mention that Shakespeare had been a _popular_ man, with _friends_ who noticed that Richard hardly looked like Shakespeare at all.

"Did you have an accident, or something?" asks the scrawny little fair-haired man called Nashe.

"Yes," agrees Richard, helplessly. "Fell off a horse."

"And that turned your hair a different color?" says Nashe, doubtfully.

"Look," snaps Richard. "Do you see any other William Shakespeares around? Can you think of any reason that someone would want to impersonate a two-bit playwright like myself?"

"Hah, no, and that's the truth," says Nashe. He smiles, showing his dreadful crooked teeth. "Who'd want to be you, Will, when they could be me?"

"I'd like nothing more than to stop and chat," says Richard, dragging his eyes away from the teeth, "but I'm a little busy-" He starts to walk away. The less time spent with Shakespeare's friends, the better.

"Nay, you don't get away that easily," says Nashe. His short strides match Richard's stumping ones. "Listen, my friend Ben Jonson, you remember him? _The Isle of Dogs_ , that was brilliant before it got banned. Anyway, he's got a new bit, a comedy. _Every Man in his Humour_. It's very good, but it needs a bit of star power, right? And I was thinking, there's William Shakespeare, hasn't been on stage since his accident or whatever it was, that'll set off Ben Jonson to a good start."

"God's Hands," hisses Richard. Shakespeare had been an actor too? The Doctor hadn't even bothered to mention that.

"Come on, Will, favor for an old friend?"

Richard glares at Nashe, who is trying to give him doe's eyes with his own rather watery and red-rimmed orbs. It looks awful.

"For a mutual acquaintance of Kit, then. Friends of Marlowe, sort of thing." Nashe says it like it ought to mean something.

Richard wishes that the Doctor had left behind a biography or some sort of guide to playing Shakespeare.

"I'll take a look at the play," he allows, if only to get the man off his back.

"Brilliant, Will, you won't regret it," says Nashe, and he's away before Richard can say otherwise.

\---

Richard does regret it.

He'd thought he could play the snob card, say Jonson wasn't good enough for him. But then he actually met the man.

"William Shakespeare," says Jonson, spreading his arms. "Bi'God, a pleasure, a pleasure."

"Yes," says Richard, and that's as far as he gets before Jonson is _actually hugging him_.

After that, it's a whirlwind of manuscript and rewrites and rehearsals, and surely there's a point at which Richard could have said no, but for the life of him he can't say when.

Which leads to him standing on this blasted stage, looking out on an enormous crowd, pretending to be some bloke named Kno'well. Kno'well is a bent old man, a part Jonson pronounced Richard admirably suited to play. Richard should have punched him and been done with it, but somehow that hadn't happened.

His only hope is to act so badly they never ask him to do it again. With that in mind, Richard says his lines haltingly and with words out of place. He corrects himself and cuts off the other actors. He glares whenever anyone else is speaking, trying to throw them off. He's terrible at jokes naturally, which works in his favor.

He can see Jonson crying in the wings as he mangles Kno'well's dialogue. That's how he can tell he's doing it right.

Except then it's over, and the audience is _standing_ to applaud. Well, most of them were standing before, but now all of them are, even the ones that had paid extra to sit down. They're chanting Shakespeare's _name_.

Jonson comes out of the wings and hugs him _again_.

"Genius," he sobs in Richard's ear. "You grasped the character of an old man to perfection!"

"You were crying," says Richard. This is awful.

"Tears of joy!" says Jonson, and turns to the crowd to bow. Richard follows suit after a moment.

He can't do anything right. Or wrong, as the case may be.

\---

Three weeks after the Jonson fiasco, Nashe is back.

"Now, I know you've given up acting - retiring on a high point, was that it? But there's a revival of Lyly coming up, and I thought-"

Richard swears he has nothing to do with Nashe's disappearance two years later.


End file.
